fandomhigh | Library [Sunday]

Lee's there, not reading the book he has in front of him.

Thursday arrived with breakfast, which she set down beside Lee. She remembered parental visits. They weren't the easiest thing to deal with when you were a teenager. "I'll be around if anyone stops in," she said and let him be.

Library's closed except for the librarian and fellow aides.

Oh, look. A fellow library aid, with a distinctive limp. The fact that she had her notebook already opened against her chest with a pre-written message on it was a good indication of why she'd ducked into the library today, so she didn't even bother making it look otherwise. Her smile was crooked and her message, handed to the Eel when she reached the desk, was simple.

"Hi."

"Hi," he said warmly, smiling. "It's good to see you. How are you?"

[*gives cake!*]

Smile warming a little at the question, Adah leaned a hip against the desk to position herself more comfortably to write back. "As well as can be expected in the shadow of the discovery that may married mother had had a one night stand with a man probably half her age."

No one could blame Adah of uninteresting conversations any more, that was for sure. Her smirk sharpened.

And how are you? Still managing to avoid your father?"

His eyes widened at her first sentence, eyes going from the page to her and back to the page.

"Sorry to hear that," he said, meaning it. "And nope. He caught me towards the end of the picnic, we had a nice, pleasant talk," he said, sarcasm heavy in his voice.

Adah shook her head a bit. "More power to her, really. I can't say I blame her. She thinks I'm appalled, though, merely because she's far too easy of a target."

She paused a moment, looking at him carefully to calculate the measure of sarcasm in his voice to the expression on his face, trying to decide on her perspective on something before writing more. But she was feeling, from his stories and his disposition when discussing his father, in the way he had been trying to avoid him, that her impression was probably correct. "So, tell me. On a scale of one to ten, what's the level of his expressed disappointment?"

That made him grin and he turned that grin towards her, laughing. "More power to her then," he said before reading her next question.

"With me?" He shrugged and leaned against the desk a little. "We'll go with eight because I'm not dead yet. Apparently, that's something."

He paused for a minute, making a quick decision. "He's not around much, hasn't been for a long time. Other things are more important than his family."

And Adah was very satisfied in the fact that her assumption had been mostly correct. She nodded. "My father's like that, as well, except for the fact that his presence existed too much rather than too little...Other things being more important, though. That had to have been Nathan Price's creed."

If he hadn't already found a creed, that was, in Christianity. Adah's head tilted, a little thoughtful on how quickly such a subject could shift her mood. She had been smiling when she limped in, right? Although she was the one who brought it up.

"At least the weekend's over," she added as an afterthought.

"Yeah," he said, waving a hand and smiling again. "Yeah, it's over. And it wasn't an entirely bad weekend, you know. There were some good parts."

Her own grin slowly returning in the corner of her mouth, a wry sort of smirk, Adah arched her eyebrow. She kept a sly eye on him as her hand drew her notebook closer for her next commentary.

"Oh? Now, I know you can't be talking about that brunch earlier today, as you've been here, and, while it was fantastic, you couldn't mean that, clearly. And the food at the picnic was marginal, at best."

"I don't mean the brunch," he said, unable to contain his amusement. "And I didn't eat at the picnic. You saw me. And I know you saw me because I saw you too."

He leaned across the desk a little more, a little closer and said, "You're missing the good part. I know you know."

Adah smirked back at him for a moment, before ducking her head to have her hair fall over her expression as she wrote back, "You do? What? Are you a mind reader now?"

Yes, she knew there was a terrible irony in the word choice, which was most of the reason for making sure she ducked her head. She wasn't entirely sure how she'd feel about writing it; she'd hoped her response to her words would remain playful, but she found that they were just....difficult. She used the hair for a moment to bite her lip, get a better control over her expression before tucking it back behind her ear and peeked over for his response.

"Nope," he said, smile softening. "No, I don't read minds. I can read expressions, though. Read people. The way they smile, they way the blink, the way they smirk," he said and smirked at her.

"But I know you know," he said, quieter this time, "because I was there. And I felt you smile and you let me hold you. So, I know."

Biting her lip lightly, Adah had to duck her head again, this time in a failed attempt to hide the red she could feel surging to her face.

"Ah, see? Here is where I know you don't know that I know because what I know involved a lot more than just holding."

But, she'd be damned if she had to admit that she liked the way he put it a lot better. And that didn't happen often.

"There was a lot more than just holding," he agreed, still grinning. "Tell me what you know."

And it was right then that Adah realized that the Eel really was getting to know her awfully well, turning things around like that and making her actually sincerely believe that he had a rapt attention for her melding of words, for her thoughts on things, her crooked perspective. It left her smile quiet for a moment, no longer so much the sharpened smirk, for a little clenching of excitement in her chest.

Finally, after feeling she'd relished in the appreciation well enough, she wrote, for the first time actually worried about the level of poetry in her words, worried because poetry was so difficult, and she felt like she had high expectations to fill, that she actually wanted to fill.

"I know," her pen flowed quickly, "that there was a lot more than holding, and that the world disappeared. It does that often, disappearing, with a blink, with a caught breath, but this...this, like the holding, was so much more than that. Taht naht...It fell away around me like walls crumbling and, in the middle of all the ruin, it was like realizing that the world was better when it wasn't there, with the rubble of the wall scattered around us..."

She didn't realize until after she wrote it that the walls had a more solid metaphor than she intended, remembering how much she'd relaxed, how her defenses had slipped away without her even realizing it. She realized this, because it was happening again, leaning a little more on the desk with her eyes closed at the sway.

Poetry. It was the poetry's fault. Poetry was difficult and took too much from her.

And Lee couldn't help it, couldn't stop himself from reaching over, from brushing both his hands across her cheeks, touch her and let her feel him.

"I can tell you what I know," he said, voice quiet. "It was something warm, something I wanted to feel when I didn't think I'd be feeling very much at all. I know that there was more than holding because it was warm and comforting and exciting. I could write what I know on my hands, on my arms, on paper and I still wouldn't be able to tell you all I know."

Similarly, Adah couldn't help the heavy leaning of her face toward her favored left, against the warmth of his right hand against her cheek, her eyes still lightly closed. It was almost too much, but walls fell around that Eel with alacrity, like landslides. And, despite that, her constant urge to just be difficult, rose up even against herself as she couldn't help thinking that, my, if he would attempt to transcribe all that on his skin, she certainly wouldn't mind tracing these at all...

But, for now, she just leaned against his hand with a content smile, boggling over it all. She'd probably never understand. In the moment, she wondered why she even bothered obsessing so much on trying to.

"I could do this..." He trailed off, brushed his thumbs across skin and smiled. "I could this everyday."

He'd never hated the library desk so much in his life.

"I can write you things on my hands or my arms whenever you'd like," he told her. "I could try to tell you what I know."

"I can't believe I'm saying this," Adah said, quietly, with dual meanings, like everything; she kept her eyes closed because she didn't trust he could keep a handle on her control if she had to look at the Eel with all of this, those eyes. He was probably smiling, too, which wouldn't help. She could actually feel his smile, after all. And, already, she was feeling her senses starting to tease her, threatening to overwhelm her and her damn sensitive nerves, "but words aren't the only way to say something..."

The senses flared for a moment, making her dormant right side suddenly twitch at an idle, back minded, right sided thought that, Dog, that sounded like something River would say.

"That's all you needed to say," Lee said, leaning nearly all the way across the counter and lightly kissing the corner of her mouth. And then pulling back, smiling before pressing a kiss against her lips.

Who cares that it was the library, middle of the day? He wanted to say something.

[About to fall off to bed omg! Back in the AM]

At least in the library, they were surrounded only by books, rather than people. A faint smile graced Adah's lips at the feeling of a light kiss brushed up against them; they pursed, slightly, out of instinct and she didn't expect more, just a light move to match the light tone of both their voices, but then the Eel returned with exactly what she didn't expect. It forced a sound of surprise out of her, and she fell, slightly, at a loss of balance, with her hand pressing hard into the desk for support before allowing herself to melt, melt, as much into it as her need for support would allow.

Lee, again, found himself hating the stupid desk but he didn't want to move, not when he didn't have to. He could lean across the desk, stroke her cheeks with his fingers, kiss her lazily, easily for a few moments before pressing a little harder.

He was coming around that desk next time.

Adah, meanwhile, was intensely grateful for that desk beneath her, knowing full well that, with those kisses, with the way he shifted them as soon as they started to get comfortable or predictable, she needed the support. The tree the other day, the desk today; she knew that, without them, the support could come from the Eel himself, but she was still loathed enough toward help to be entirely sold on the kisses to exchange them for an entire offering of her independence. This, though, this was divine, and each returning kiss came with a soft grin and a prayer that the arm she was leaning forward on decided to stay strong.

It was the grins, the way he could feel them against his lips, his mouth, that made him nearly stop what he was doing, just so he could see the grin. But, this was better, a lot better, and he didn't want to stop.

Instead, he slid the hands on her cheeks back a little, fingers brushing back the hair at her temples as he stood on tip toes, pressed closer, kissed deeper.

It was almost if Adah could feel the swell of the shift, the transition, fingers in her hair and a deepened kiss, a certain eagerness involving tip toes and tilted heads. The clenching of her chest, the dulling of her brain, the unfortunate tendencies for breaths to get lost. She didn't want to, but it was all so...she had to pull away for a second, gathering in a breath to center herself again, finally opening her eyes in that moment, to see his expression as he leaned her forehead toward his. She thought to say something, something small, just his name, but decided to just let her look say it instead.

Lee still had his eyes closed, still had his fingers brushing against her hair and had newly acquired pink cheeks, deeper breathing.

He smiled though, slow and warm, smiled so only she could see because she was the only one he wanted to see and didn't move away otherwise.

That his eyes were still closed, that his cheeks were tinted pink, that his breath caught and he still smiled even though she'd pulled away...Adah had the answer to any question, any doubt, any reservation she could have had at that moment, so she closed her eyes again, leaning in, to lightly resume where she'd broken off.

He leaned in closer again, enjoying the light, lazy pace, enjoying that she'd come back. He kept the rhythm of his fingers slow, gentle, again, so she could feel him, know he was there. Her hair was soft, long, falling over his fingers and he made note to remember that sensation.

Lee's figuring that he ought to probably at least see his father off before he left tonight.

That doesn't mean he has to be happy about that.

And I'm around!

Library [Sunday]

Morning

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Afternoon

OOC